


And the Clocks Stop

by Yevynaea



Series: Lost in the Woods [5]
Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe - Dark, Anger, Angst, Arguing, Beast!Wirt - Freeform, Brotherhood, Dark Character, Fear, Future Fic, Gen, Growing Up, Lies, Male-Female Friendship, One Shot, Sharing a Bed, Time Skips, and wirt really isn't getting any more human here, but hey the timeline of this one isn't as fucked up as the other ones, but not really bc it's in this crazy timeline so i don't think it counts, but only small ones this time, i feel like there should be a tag for 'slight attempted murder', in which time is discussed at great length
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 00:00:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2830766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yevynaea/pseuds/Yevynaea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time is a funny thing, especially in The Unknown; it's been moving too fast for the tastes of the one who'll be left behind by it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Clocks Stop

**Author's Note:**

> Haha yeah this took longer than I would've liked to finish, but I finally did (at the cost of the next Cipher Twins getting finished) so here it is. Enjoy, and thank you guys for reading these stories, I'm really glad they've been so well received. ^u^
> 
> ALSO this series now has a soundtrack on 8tracks, which I almost forgot to mention. It's right here: http://8tracks.com/mickeyrowan/lost-in-the-woods and yeah. go listen to that if you want. :)

Wirt wonders sometimes, why time moves where it hadn't before. When Greg gets old enough to shave, Wirt wonders why the moon had looked the same every night until after he blew the lantern out. When the Woodsman is gone and an Edelwood grows behind the house, Wirt wonders why Beatrice answers with a year long-passed when he asks her when she was born. When he watches a girl with a purple scarf leave the inn, Wirt wonders when 'highwayman' became a title no one used anymore. He wonders, and he knows the answer, but he doesn't know how to make the answer useful so he keeps wondering instead. He knows that the one who held his role before him must have kept time frozen in the Unknown, but he doesn't know how to do the same.

The day Beatrice's parents leave for Pottsfield is the day Wirt fully realizes that time isn't going to stop again unless he makes it. The day Beatrice finds white in her hair, and her siblings tease her about being old, is the day Wirt decides for sure that he wants time to stop again. But he still doesn't know how to accomplish it.

More of the Waldfogels leave as time goes on, not to Pottsfield but to other places; they want to see more of their world, to make homes and families of their own, to escape their roles of feathered spies whispering secrets in the ear of the Beast. Beatrice stays. She stays at the house and stays with Wirt and with Greg, even when she's the only one of her family to do so, but she doesn't talk to Wirt much anymore after Wendell.

The day time freezes againisn't even a day notable by anything else. It's just another day. Greg goes out to chop firewood for the house, and Beatrice goes into town to trade vegetables from the garden that used to be her father's. And Wirt watches his brother, sees Greg's hair streaked through with silver, sees callused hands, sees crow's-foot wrinkles around Gregory's eyes, and something in Wirt finally snaps and he just wants everything to _stop-- stop stop stop you can't grow old without me you can't leave me please don't go--_ and everything does.

They don't realize it for some time, of course, only Wirt understands what he's done right away and even then he doesn't know _how_ , and he doesn't tell the others, so they don't figure it out at first. After a while, though, they start to wonder.

 

▲■▲■▲■▲

 

There's a turtle infestation a couple of weeks later, in the branch of the house Beatrice's oldest siblings used to occupy.

"Can't _you_ get rid of them?" Beatrice asks Wirt, the first words she's said to him in weeks, carelessly tossing a few of the creatures into a basket that sits under the window. "They listen to you, don't they?"

"No," Wirt pinches a turtle between his thumb and forefinger and looks at it distastefully before dropping it back into the basket. "They probably listened to the old Beast, but I can't make them do anything I say."

"Hmm." Beatrice presses her lips into a thin line and puts another of the animals into the basket.

"We should bring all these to Lorna and Auntie Whispers." Greg says-- mostly to Beatrice-- as he walks up to the window with an armful of turtles.

"Wasn't Whispers sick last time you were there?" Beatrice frowns. "Is she still there?"

They take the basket of turtles to Whisper's house anyway, and she's there, still sick but no older than she'd been the last time Greg saw her.

"It's like a miracle," Lorna says softly, as she transfers the turtles into another basket so that Greg can have his own one back. "Auntie kept getting worse and worse, and then it just stopped!"

Greg asks Wirt about it on the way home.

"What's going on?" He knows that Wirt will get his meaning through even such a vague inquiry, but he doesn't know if his brother is even listening until Wirt responds.

"Nothing." Wirt half-lies from somewhere in the trees. Greg hums like he knows Wirt is hiding something, and neither of them says anything else.

 

▲■▲■▲■▲

 

There's a half-moon in the sky that's been there for near a week, and Beatrice eyes it with as much of a frown can be achieved when one has a beak instead of lips. Her feathers ruffle in the wind, and she shivers, taking flight back toward the house because there aren't any lost souls out tonight that she's seen, and even if there were she's learned that helping them wouldn't make much of a difference. She flies low, through the trees, to avoid missing anything, but she's forced to veer to the side when a familiar shadow appears out of nowhere.

"Cheese and crackers, Wirt, would you stop doing that?" She glares at him, and where years ago he would have shrunken under her gaze now he only stares. She used to think that Wirt flinching away from people when they brought up his nature was the worst thing he could do. Now she knows better, and wishes she didn't.

"Sorry." He sounds a little bit apologetic, at least, but she can't help but think it seems forced, fake. He looks like he's planning on saying something more, but then he doesn't.

"The moon isn't changing." The bluebird points out, looking up at it and expecting Wirt to follow her gaze, but instead he just nods.

"I know." He says.

"Why isn't it?" Beatrice asks.

“Because it isn’t.” Wirt skirts around the question, and Beatrice sends him an unimpressed glare.

“Did you do something?” She asks, narrowing her eyes even further at the stony silence she receives instead of an answer. “You did, didn’t you?”

Wirt turns away. Beatrice sighs as she lets him disappear into the forest.

 

▲■▲■▲■▲

 

            _Thunk._ Greg wrenches the axe free and swings it down again, and it buries into the wood with ease, just as sharp as the day he inherited it. The lantern is at his feet, not quite running low on oil yet but not full, either, meaning he’ll have to go out looking for more Edelwoods soon. That thought buzzes in the back of his mind, a fact he can’t ignore no matter how hard he tries.

A familiar shadow appears in his peripheral vision, watching from a distance and trying not to be seen, but Greg’s never been able not to see Wirt, not before they came to the Unknown and certainly not after. Leaving the axe where it sits in the tree in front of him, Greg turns to face his brother.

“Time isn’t moving anymore.” He guesses. “Just like it was when we first got here. You stopped it.”

After a moment of hesitation, Wirt nods.

“Yes.” Wirt says quietly, and Gregory frowns.

“Why’s it been moving this whole time?” He asks. Wirt’s head tilts to the side, and Greg can’t help but notice how much more difficult it is, after all they’ve changed, to imagine the boy his brother used to be under the shadows.

“Because I didn’t know I could stop it like he did.” Wirt answers. Greg doesn’t have to ask who ‘he’ is.

Adjusting the purple scarf that sits around his neck, then grabbing the axe again, Greg doesn’t reply. He pretends he can’t still see his brother watching him.

 

▲■▲■▲■▲

 

            The lantern, where it sits on the table in the corner, is bright enough to blind her compared to the dark hallway, and Beatrice blinks until her eyes adjust. She walks into Greg’s room on silent feet. He doesn’t stir until she climbs into his bed next to him, pushing him over slightly so she won’t fall off the edge, then he rolls over with an expression somewhere between amusement and concern.

            “You get too cold again?” He asks, and the woman nods, already nuzzling into the warmth of the mattress space she’s just shoved him out of. “I’ll help fix the window in your room tomorrow.”

            “Mhmm.” Beatrice agrees sleepily, and she hears Greg give a breathy little laugh, so she opens her eyes. The first thing they’re drawn to isn’t her friend, but the moon outside the window over his shoulder, and she doesn’t realize she’s staring at it until he rolls over to look too.

            “He’s not going to start it again.” Greg murmurs.

            “What happens when people want him to?” Beatrice inquires. She doesn’t say ‘when _I_ want him to,’ or ‘when _we_ want him to,’ because the first sounds too selfish when it comes to mind and the second, well, she isn’t sure if Greg will ever really want time to start again, if it means facing the uncertainty of growing too old to keep Wirt’s lantern lit.

            “I dunno.” Greg replies honestly, rolling back over to face her, and Beatrice closes her eyes again because his eyes are too worried for her to meet them, right now. “I guess we’ll find out, if it happens.”

 

▲■▲■▲■▲

 

            It does happen, though not as quickly as one might think. First to notice is Enoch, because Enoch is a bit more observant than most others, and he asks about it. When Beatrice visits her parents in Pottsfield, Enoch pulls her aside while she’s picking corn, half-jokingly asks if her Beast is trying to steal new arrivals away.

            “He’s not _my_ anything.” Beatrice says, just as vehemently as she might have decades ago when she was a stubborn child, and Enoch apologizes, but doesn’t correct himself. Beatrice glares. “And don’t be so ridiculous as to think this is about you.”

            “Don’t think it’s not.” He replies. “If this is happening, it’ll take just as much adjustment as when it changed before. This is about all of us.”

            “Not to him, it isn’t.” Beatrice insists, and Enoch nods.

            “No, but to the rest of us…” He trails off, looking across the fields at the people of his town, and beyond, into the trees.

 

▲■▲■▲■▲

 

            There are others, growing in number and in aggression as time goes on, worried or angry or just plain afraid, and most of them haven’t been friends for a long time or never were to begin with, so no one else actually asks them about it. But there are whispers, there are murmurs, there are strangers trying to start conversation with comments on how time’s stopped moving again.

            The new ones are the worst, the ones who haven’t been in the Unknown long enough to have seen the way things were before, but have made it this far through willpower or sheer luck. They’re the worst because to them it isn’t a matter of adjusting back, it’s a matter of adjusting to something they’ve never experienced; they’ve never seen seasons go by without the stars changing overhead, and they’re not happy that they’re seeing it now.

            “People are getting mad." Greg points out, one afternoon, when he and Beatrice are out in front of the house and Wirt appears out of the trees. The lantern, as always, burns brightly in Greg’s hand.

"Is that a rock fact?" Wirt asks, his tone sharper than he probably intended, making the joke sound more like a jab.

"Wirt," Beatrice says, frustrated. "Please take this seriously."

"I am." Wirt replies. He sounds angry, more than he has been in a long time.

"Mrs. Langtree's girls are only five. You can't expect them to stay that way forever." Beatrice tries to reason. "And besides, nobody wants time to be frozen forever anyway. If you don't start it again--"

"If I don't start it again, no one will grow older." Wirt interrupts. "That's it. There's no unspeakable fate determined and destined to find you if the stars don't move in the skies."

Greg realizes that's the closest thing to a poem he's heard Wirt spin in years, and it worries him both that his brother stopped and that he never noticed.

"What if they want to grow old?" He points out.

"What if _we_ want to?" Beatrice adds. His gaze flicking between the two of them, Wirt doesn't say anything more, so Gregory speaks again.

"You can't expect everyone to let you stop time again just because you're scared of the future." He says, really only a guess at his brother's reasoning. Wirt recoils, and Greg has a sliver of a second to register that his guess was correct before Wirt's form is flickering, stretching, blurring, hands bent into claws and raised in anger. Greg has the next second to realize that he can't see _Wirt_ in the motion, just the Beast. He can't tell if his lack of surprise makes this less horrifying or more.

"Wirt, stop it!" Beatrice demands, voice steady even though her face is pale with terror because she sees the same thing Greg does.

"Why should I?" Wirt asks, mocking. He stops shaking but there are Edelwood roots snaking around Beatrice's ankles, and she shifts to fly away from them, landing on Greg's shoulder.

"Wirt," Greg starts, but his brother cuts him off.

"That isn't my name anymore, _remember_?" Wirt sounds like he's sneering, under the shadows. "You called me something else, before. You don't think I'm really 'Wirt', anymore, do you?"

Greg grits his teeth. His hand, the one not holding the lantern, itches for his axe, and he wonders why he left the damn thing inside. He sees Edelwood branches beginning to edge out of the Earth near him, and for once he does not ignore them. Deliberately stepping back, away from them and from Wirt, he glares pointedly at the branches until they slither back into the soil.

"Not when you act like this, _Beast._ " Greg throws the name toward his brother like a punch, but Wirt doesn't so much as flinch. "What makes you think it'll end well for anyone for you to keep time stopped?"

"The people here have lived this way before, they can do it again." The Beast says, almost stubbornly.

"But they shouldn't have to!" Greg protests, Beatrice a comforting presence by his ear despite her stony silence, even when Wirt's shadow shifts and grows and his eyes glow in rings of color, daring the Woodsman to speak against him again. So of course, Greg does. "They don't want to."

"What they want isn't important." Wirt dismisses. The light begins to get sucked away from the world around them, and the scene is so familiar that Beatrice realizes that Wirt must be doing this on purpose, mirroring everything so perfectly to _that night_ , drawing on the memory and the tactics of his predecessor for intimidation. It isn't a comfortable thought.

"What they want is very important!" The Woodsman shoots back, just as angry now as his once-older brother. "The forest may be yours but that doesn't mean you have the right to--"

"I have _every_ right!" Wirt leeches all the remaining light away at once, so that only his eyes and the lantern illuminate the shadows surrounding them. "The Unknown is my claim; I have every right to keep it as it is!"

"You don't own--" Beatrice pipes up, but is interrupted.

" _Yes, I do._ " The Beast says lowly.

"No you don't!" Greg manages to get through his sentence, but only just. In the same second as he gets the last word out, Wirt is shaking again.

"Your soul is _mine_ , Woodsman!" The creature shouts, the title rolling off his tongue easily, like it's nothing. Greg takes half a step back, eyes wide in fear, and Beatrice nestles further in the crook of his neck, feathers ruffled in distress. "Your soul, your life, and every other soul here, they are mine. They've been mine since the beginning."

"That--" Greg stops to gather his thoughts, and swallow the lump in his throat. "That doesn't change the fact that you're just doing this because you're scared, _Wirt_."

Wirt is brought up short. Calming somewhat, he lets the darkness fall away from the space around them.

"Wouldn't you be?" He asks, and where minutes ago there was nothing of the boy now there is nothing of the monster, and Greg can only hear his brother, still only fifteen despite the decades that have gone by. The boy's voice is small, nothing like the boom of his previous anger.

"Yes." Greg replies honestly. "I'm already scared about what will happen to all of us in the future; I can't imagine what it must be like to have everyone be moving on without you. But that doesn't make it right to keep everyone stuck _with_ you."

Wirt is silent, stoic, and then he nods, once. When he retreats into the woods, Beatrice lets out a slow breath. Greg squeezes his eyes shut because he doesn't want to see the Edelwood trying once again to root his feet in place.

 

▲■▲■▲■▲

 

The next week, the moon is just a bit thinner.

**Author's Note:**

> K so that one scene with Greg and Beatrice was written as purely platonic but if you actually ship it then go ahead man I can't stop you.


End file.
